MAKATI CITY–HAVING a collective voice may save the jobs of Filipino nurses threatened to be sucked into the fiscal hole of the United Kingdom’s public health system, a health management expert recommends.

Filipino nurses who wish to stay longer in UK should make the NHS (National Health Service Trusts in the UK) realize their impact on that country’s health sector, Dr. Eufemia Yap of the Ateneo Graduate School of Business told the OFW Journalism Consortium.

Not yet cause celebre for gov’t, says academic

SAN FRANCISCO, USA–ARE more Filipinos here coming out to explore the belly of the beast legally?

In view of American officials’ moves to squeeze out illegal migrants in the name of homeland security, Philippine government data swing to the affirmative node. The figures show the number of Filipinos “in hiding” –Tago ng tago (TNT) in local parlance– have dropped sharply.

This is what the multiple-year stock estimates of overseas Filipinos from 1997 to 2005, from Philippine government agency Commission on Filipinos Overseas revealed: there was a high of 1,913,941 undocumented migrants in 1998, and a “record-low” of 881,123 last year.

SAN FRANCISCO, USA—JOHN Ford was flipping an egg in his kitchen when union members and immigrant activists in the Bay Area marched down Market Street here.

Ford may have sensed something was up since he paused for a fraction of a minute before going back to cooking.

Ford’s absence in that march bares the ambivalence that have clutched American unions on the issue of immigration reforms, pending bills in Congress that never saw light when legislators recessed October 1.

QUEZON CITY—POLICE officials in one of the key metropolitan cities said they are going to be aggressive in weeding out illegal recruiters, using surveillance cameras and other advanced equipment.

Superintendent James Brillantes, Quezon City Police District’s Intelligence Investigation Division chief, told the OFW Journalism Consortium the move comes with an increase in the number of cases his group has monitored and worked on.

MANILA—ANOTHER task force created by a government agency was met with skepticism by migrants’ rights advocates.

Reeling from reports of undocumented workers jumping to their deaths to escape abusive employers in Lebanon, Malacañang issued Executive Order 548 titled “Creating a Task Force against Illegal Recruitment (TFAIR) under the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO).”